ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the reader with using Lotus 1-2-3 as a simple but efficient tool to simulate and analyse simple control problems. The major advantage of this approach is that once one is able to define and solve the problem this way, one can easily develop a control application on any process computer. Ninety percent of the control loops in the chemical and petrochemical industry work well by using simple proportional, integral, and derivative (PID) control. The PID controller has been used in pneumatic instrumentation, in analogue instrumentation, and in digital instrumentation and computer control systems. Personal computers offer the control engineer an excellent tool to study the behaviour of controlled and uncontrolled processes. Control engineers write an expression like equation as a transfer function. A transfer function determines the relationship between process input and output. Computers are digital computers which can make recursive calculations, and, therefore, the transfer functions will be discretized.
